Where the crap "just keep(s) coming, like the punishing fists of a well-conditioned boxer when the bellman has fallen asleep." -- Quote stolen from Mickey

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

I'm Glad I'm not without Inhibitions

It's really a good thing that I have more control over my actions than an adult chimpanzee. I wouldn't mind all the sex that bonobos have, but I'm talking about the large species. The one that rips off people's faces and occasionally hunt young children in Africa. Bonobos are the free-love hippies of the primate world. Regular chimps are the 'roid ragers. Bonobos solve arguments with penises and vaginas. Regular chimps solve arguments by throwing poop and rocks at each other.

Anyway, sometimes when I walk down the hall at school I get the sudden urge to just sucker punch a random kid in the face. I imagine their expression of shock and pain as they fall to the floor wondering why the English teacher just punched them in the face, and I have to clench my teeth not to chuckle out loud. I mean, they might expect this from the baseball or football coaches. Those guys look like they might take a swing at a kid for fun, but never from the goofy English teacher. Sometimes the kid that sparks this involuntary thought is a kid I've had to teach before and have good reason not to like, but more often it's just a random kid. Maybe the kid just looks like an asshole. Maybe the kid just looks petite enough that I think I could maybe get them to leave their feet with a good upper cut. This is a weird impulse for me, though. I can't even watch those shows that stitch together videos of car crashes and failed motorcycle stunts. I get sick to my stomach when the TV networks replay the serious knee injury the running back just suffered. I don't want to see someone else get hurt. Not cool.

Luckily, I have enough mental restraint that I've never even come close to acting on that impulse. That's what makes me human (along with my fully bipedal locomotion and human set of DNA). I can override my instincts with my higher reasoning.

I still think it might be funny to get a glimpse of that look of shock and pain if I ever did lose my ability to keep myself from sucker punching some random kid in the hall.

It means you're honest with your sense of humor. In theory, randomly sucker punching a random teenage boy is hilarious. In practice it's only a sad. What kind of grown man walks around sucker punching random teenage boys? Only one who uses them to take out his frustrations about ambitions unfulfilled.